By Rosemary Shinohara
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: February 28, 2003)
The main group campaigning for a shoreline route for the continuation of Anchorage's Coastal Trail presented a plan Thursday the group says could chop nearly $20 million in costs and drastically reduce the number of residential properties affected.
Friends of the Coastal Trail, after weeks of poring over maps and talking to critics, came up with "common-sense adjustments" to the trail route preferred by the state, group spokesman Mike Jens said.
The chosen route would cost an estimated $37 million and is expected to be paid for mostly with federal highway dollars.
Friends of the Coastal Trail listed 17 ways it found to overcome criticisms that the extension costs too much, takes too much private property or disturbs wildlife.
The group held a news conference on the deck of a South Anchorage home above the proposed route. The house overlooks Turnagain Arm, with a view of the Kenai Mountains to the south and Chickaloon Bay to the southwest.
"All people of Anchorage deserve access to this beauty," said homeowner Eric McCallum, who supports the coastal route.
The existing Tony Knowles Coastal Trail travels 11 miles from downtown to Kincaid Park. The extension would take the trail another 13 miles to Potter Marsh, passing below McCallum's house on Jarvi Drive.
The state released an environmental impact statement late last year favoring a mostly coastal route. That charged up a longtime community debate. With one more week to go in a public-comment period, several hundred people already have sent in their views, said Mark Dalton of HDR Alaska Inc., the state contractor that wrote the report.
That's not counting the 476 pages of testimony that resulted from a public hearing in December.
The state Department of Fish and Game, which has questioned the coastal route all along, is about ready to hand over some 200 pages of criticisms, said Lance Trasky, regional habitat supervisor. Most have to do with protecting wildlife in the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, which Fish and Game manages. The trail skirts the edge of the refuge and tunnels under it in spots but is forbidden by federal law from crossing the refuge if there's a reasonable alternative.
Jens says the state trail planners, in attempting to avoid the refuge, pushed the trail up from the shore into more residential parcels than is necessary.
The refuge boundaries zig and zag. By adjusting refuge boundaries and trading some city land for about 10 acres of state refuge property, the planners could avoid many incursions into residential property, Jens said. The city could replace that refuge land and more by trading up to 150 acres of city land, he said.
The city did talk about such a trade about a year ago, said city project administrator Lori Schanche. But the city decided it would be best to wait until a route is finally selected before working on such a deal, she said.
The elimination of four tunnels and route adjustments would cut millions from the cost, the group contends. Just one move, for example, moving the trail below the railroad tracks along Jarvi Drive, would save $4.1 million, it said.
If all of the changes Friends of the Coastal Trail proposes were implemented, Jens estimates the trail would cross only 25 residential properties. The environmental report says the preferred route as it stands would affect 177 parcels.
That's 31 more than any alternative route.
But Jens thinks the state may have overstated the number of properties affected anyway. He said he could find only 130-some private parcels identified in state maps.
HDR's Dalton says he doesn't know why the environmental report's count differs from what Jens can find. HDR used a computer program to identify property affected, with the same approach for each of the alternative routes studied, Dalton said.
"Where a line touched a piece of property, that was automatically kicked into the mix."
But the consultant and state agree that a number of the 177 parcels listed as impacted are either assessed at no value or would be only minimally affected.
About 21 lots have no assessed value, meaning they are remnants, undeveloped or possibly common-use areas for a homeowners association, said Jim Childers, project manager for the state Department of Transportation.
The right-of-way costs estimated for another eight or nine pieces are less than $1,000, which indicates only a small portion of the lot would be touched, Childers said. The state assigns costs of 125 percent of assessed value to each piece, assuming that the assessment is below market value.
"There are an awful lot in the $2,000 to $3,000 range," Childers said.
In refining the trail design, the state would reduce the amount of property affected, he said. But right now, the state work is on hold, waiting for the public comments to be compiled and evaluated.
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To comment on the extension, write Jim Childers, c/o HDR Alaska Inc., 2525 C St., Suite 305, Anchorage 99503, or e-mail southtrailcomment@hdrinc.com. The deadline is March 7.
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Reporter Rosemary Shinohara can be reached at rshinohara@adn.com and 907-257-4340.